Greens won’t deal for gay marriage

Greens won’t deal for gay marriage

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has told Sydney Star Observer her party would not be prepared to compromise on another issue to see same-sex marriage legalised in Australia — even if they gained an outright balance of power at the next election.
“We’re not into horse trading … between one issue versus another. That’s not how the Parliament works,” Hanson-Young said in an interview last fortnight. “That’s not how you deliver good policy outcomes.”
Hanson-Young confirmed that view in a subsequent interview last week.
“Our support for marriage equality is not in doubt, however, it would be irresponsible to hold the Senate to ransom on another issue in order to secure support for our policy.
“The Greens are a party that represents all Australians — it would be irresponsible to sell out one constituency to curry favour from another.”
Instead, marriage equality will have to wait until the number of supporters across parties in both Houses constitute a majority and their leaders allow a conscience vote — or until the Greens can win a federal election.
During the vote on the Marriage Equality (Amendment) Bill, the Greens’ five senators voted in favour of same-sex-marriage, while 26 other senators were absent from the chamber. Some were likely to have been avoiding a vote against same-sex marriage, but others had known commitments.
Marriage equality would need 39 votes to pass in the Senate.
It would need 76 votes to pass the House of Representatives where only Labor’s Peter Garrett has voiced support for same-sex marriage, and he has been silent on the issue since 2006.
Hanson-Young plans to bring back a bill to amend the Marriage Act in the first session of the next Parliament. In the meantime she urges marriage equality supporters to vote Green.
“If people want to see a change, they need to vote for the party that represents their views on that matter,” she said.
Australian Democrats president Julia Melland told Sydney Star Observer that being on the cross-benches was about negotiation, and that she would like to see the Greens do more of that in the Senate.
“It’s about trying to find the best path through any kind of disagreement or mismatch of ideas,” Melland said.“I would have thought that’s what voters would expect — that people would be working towards a solution, not setting up more boundaries.”
Melland said marriage equality was a high priority for the Democrats because it was about fundamental human rights.
In 2006 the Democrats were the first party to introduce a bill to legalise same-sex marriage.

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8 responses to “Greens won’t deal for gay marriage”

  1. The way the greens are polling I think the two major parties will be pulling their fingers out campaigning their little butts off but can we trust libs and labour again? of course not.

  2. To get same-sex marriage, we need more than just to get the greens in the balance of power. The Greens and the Dems had that back in 04, but Labor, Liberal and National conspired to amend the marriage act to ban same-sex marriage. To elect a majority Greens government is a very optimistic hope, so the best we can hope for at the next election is to have such a big Greens vote that the Lab/Lib/Nats change their policy in an attempt to retrieve lost votes.

  3. The Greens won’t use the balance of power to help us get same-sex marriage?!

    But in Tasmania the Greens are negotiating with either major party on who will form Government – depending, in part, on who will overturn a pulp mill.

  4. This guarantees same-sex marriage will not pass.

    The Greens will not use the balance of power to force major parties to support a same-sex marriage bill.

    When Clover Moore had the balance of power, she did the opposite – and achieved major reform on our behalf.

    We have just been dudded BIG TIME.

  5. I like that the Greens are responsible with how they respond to issues of importance. They’ve negotiated the Senate out of deadlock before, like on the stimulus package, I think they can do the same again.
    Integrity should be the most basic requirement for a politician, it’s not hard to see who has it and who doesn’t…

  6. Is this story news? One of the main differences between the Greens and the Democrats has been the Greens unwillingness to cross-trade issues.

    I don’t think it’s possible to actually be a party of principle and at the same time “negotiate” (ie sell out) on some principles to advance others. The end result is that the supposed principles come to mean nothing.

    I don’t want to see the Greens follow the trajectory of the Democrats…

  7. “Hanson-Young plans to bring back a bill to amend the Marriage Act in the first session of the next Parliament.”
    – This is the important action for me. The Greens are the only ones who will publicly stand up for full equality & won’t give up.
    It would also be great though if they could wreck parliament & hold it to ransom with their balance of power- but obviously they don’t want to play dirty.
    The other thing for us (& Andrew) to ponder is that if they did go ahead & say they were planning to “wreck” parliament over some key balance of power leverage issues, then that would let the cat out of the bag & give competitors a one-liner to use against them prior to the election in a massive scare campaign.

  8. I think we should all get together and take our blood and dump it outside the Prime Ministers Catholic Church he always goes to. Our Blood is the same colour as his. We are human and deserve some basic respect.

    Such a peaceful protest would grab world headlines. It will be odd if we get Gay Marriage but have no Federal Equal Opportunity Protection. Many laws need to be changed.